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A Postscript to my last FDL post

I see that FDL has banned the commenter who opined so nastily about me; clearly he is not representative of the FDL editors and community. I also wanted to post this link to Jane Hamsher’s recent statement about the election, which contains a lot of good sense.

In the contentious 2008 Democratic Presidential primary, there were many members of the FDL community who passionately supported one candidate over another. We chose as a blog not to endorse either candidate because we did not want to alienate either significant sector of our community. Moreover, we firmly believe that elections are the time when candidates are the most responsive to the needs of the constituents whose votes they hope to woo.

In 2012, the LGBT community shut their pocketbooks and suddenly the President Obama “evolved” on gay marriage. Likewise, DREAM Activists who have faced deportation for years announced that they would occupy Obama campaign headquarters in swing states — and the President decided he would use his own authority to grant them work permits.

We believe that the Presidential election should be a time for healthy discussion among those who have different and often passionately held points of view.

Some argue that failing to support the President and being indifferent to a Mitt Romney win could mean the Supreme Court is poisoned for a generation. That’s a valid position.

Others argue that cynically accepting the “least worst option” fuels a race to the bottom; they may look to third party candidates for answers. Third party candidates have historically forced major party candidates into more populist positions. They have also played the role of spoilers. It is not engaging in bad faith to bring up either of these points.

But most importantly, groups whose votes are still up for grabs are using this time to advocate for things they care about that are within the President’s purview to impact, much like LGBT and DREAM activists have done. Because once a candidate knows you’re in the tank for them, your ability to leverage your support is gone. That’s just a political reality….Individual writers on FDL may take different positions. It does not mean that as a blog we endorse any of them. Our goal is to make a fair home for all sides of this discussion, and not shut it down.

I received a personal communication yesterday from a founder of the blog Dissenting Democrat (tagline: NObama 2012 – Just Because He Is Not One of Them Doesn’t Mean He’s One of Us), which makes a lot of valid points about Obama’s failings as well. As I wrote him, a lot of what upsets me about the “Obama sucks even worse than Romney” mood on the left is the seeming complacency about both the reach and radicalism of the far right, especially in regard to the culture issues–women, race, gays, etc.–about which the two parties really do have significant differences.

Though few Dems deserve to be castigated as trickle down Reaganites, the consensus between the two parties on free enterprise is really problematic. People on both sides of the spectrum intuit that capitalism is in a terminal crisis, I suspect. Republicans don’t care, so long as their own economic interests are protected. Democrats, though, suffer from terrible cognitive dissonance. The very idea that so-called leftist Democrats can’t drum up support for a public option makes my head just about explode.

But I’m still voting for Obama.

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3 thoughts on “A Postscript to my last FDL post”

You can’t get people on this side of the political fence to march in lock step like the Republicans do. In one way it shows that people on the Democratic and leftist side actually do think things out .At times, I do get very upset with the waffling and lack of decisiveness on the Democrats. I believe we would be better served if the people in our political realm would start playing hardball. Trying to play Republican lite -I find odious and so do a lot of leftists. However I don’t think we should lose sight of what a Romney win would result in-and it is nothing good for any of us unless we make a very large amount of money

“As I wrote him, a lot of what upsets me about the “Obama sucks even worse than Romney” mood on the left is the seeming complacency about both the reach and radicalism of the far right, especially in regard to the culture issues–women, race, gays, etc.–about which the two parties really do have significant differences.”

By now, both parties are being led by committed apparatchiks of the Elite. No one who is NOT a member of their club is going to be allowed to attain high office. The Elite have no intention of letting a mass of ignorant and unbathed peasants upset their carefully laid plans…. Is that so hard to understand?